April 06--When James Wallace returned to his home Friday after reports of a fire, police were escorting his stepson to a squad car.
"I told him, 'We love you. We won't abandon you.' He said, 'I love you ,too, Daddy' and gave me a hug."
Soon, the 14-year-old, Johnathan Ray, was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated arson, accused of intentionally setting a fire in a stairwell that trapped his mother upstairs.
By the time firefighters reached the burning home, the stairway was destroyed, and they had to use ladders to reach 45-year-old Gwendolyn Wallace, a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. When they did reach her, she had no pulse.
Family and friends stood on the sidewalk of the home at Bethay and Shelby Drive in Hickory Hill on Friday, wondering what could have happened between mother and son.
He had been suspended from school, but his father said it was for what he called a minor infraction -- "running his mouth."
Next-door neighbor Chris Higgins said Ray is about "six feet two and growing" and played defense on the football team at Southwind High School.
"Colleges were already showing some interest in him," he said.
Ray's stepfather, a security guard, said schools had not contacted him or his son, but might have attended a game. He said he always treated Ray as his own child and called him son. Ray was hoping to someday play for the University of Alabama.
Wallace had gone to work before dawn Friday. When he was summoned home, he said, "My first reaction was shock more than anything."
He wiped at his eyes as he recalled the vivacious woman he married "four years, 11 months and a week" ago.
"She was my soulmate and my best friend. I could tell my wife one thousand times a day how much I loved her." He said Ray also "loved his mother immensely. There was no hatred between mother and son."
When fire and police arrived just after 6 a.m., they found Ray outside and asked a neighbor, Tracie Graham, if he could stay with her family while fire crews worked on the house.
"We had no idea about the situation," said Graham. She said she, her husband and Ray sat on a sofa and watched news of the fire on television.
"(Ray) was very subdued. Everyone else was crying," she said. When officers returned to question Ray, she said he asked "if his mother was in there."
Shelby County Fire Department investigators and Sheriff's Department detectives reported in a news release that Ray "admitted that he was the one who set the fire after an earlier disagreement with his mother."
Fire Department spokesman Brent Perkins said he did not know if the teenager used an accelerant to start the fire, but samples were taken and sent to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, he said.
Ray was taken to the Shelby County Juvenile Detention Center at about 4:45 p.m. Friday and is expected to have a brief hearing Saturday -- via video conference from the jail -- with a Juvenile Court magistrate who will explain the charges and inform him that an attorney will be appointed for him if his family cannot afford one.
The teen likely will remain jailed until he appears before a magistrate Monday afternoon for a detention hearing, at which point the judge could release the teen while the case is pending.
Relatives kept a vigil at the home for most of the day. Mary Jones, a sister-in-law to Gwendolyn Wallace from a previous marriage, said they had remained friends. She described Wallace as "definitely the life of the party. She was loud and funny and kept herself up. She was beautiful. You knew when she was in the room."
Family members, including the stepfather, said they knew of no long-running rifts between the mother and son, nor anything that could have created a sudden outburst that led to violence.
"He didn't throw fits or anything like that," said his uncle, Terry Matthews. "You never know what people are thinking."
Staff reporters Jody Callahan and Timberly Moore contributed to this story.
Copyright 2013 - The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
